What kind of men buys sex dolls?

“Unfortunate in love” or see women as unknowable.

Key points

People make sex dolls for centuries, But today's silicone models are incredibly realistic.
Men who own sex dolls are not particularly different from those who do not have them, Apart from the fact that they were “unfortunate in love”.
Despite the concerns that sex dolls encourage sexual aggression, The research notes that the opposite is true.
The “Perturbante valley” It is an observation of robotics that describes how people respond to humanoid robots. People generally respond well to robots that have an approximately humanoid form: A head over a bust with two arms and two legs. But when the robots begin to look more like true humans, People often report a feeling “unsettling” o “unsettling”. This is because the appearance and behaviors, although close, they are not entirely correct.

On the contrary, The human audience responds well to imaginary humanoid robots that seem and behave just like humans, because in reality they are interpreted by human actors. Consider, for example, Humanoid robots in the universes of Star Trek or West World.

The mysterious valley also emerges in other representations of humans. For example, computer animation has become incredibly realistic, but human beings “animated” they can still have a disturbing feeling or “unsettling”.

The construction of sex dolls is another company in which the disturbing valley occurs. Even if lately they have been a lot in the news, In reality there is nothing new in sex dolls. For centuries, The sailors made use of natural size chosen dolls known as Dames de Voyage or “Dutch wives” as a sexual outburst during long journeys.

In the same way, When I was a young adult in the early 80s, A inflatable sex doll was not an unusual gift for the girl without a girl. Neither a Dutch wife nor a inflatable sex doll seemed or felt like a real woman.

Sex and love in Uncanny Valley
However, Today's silicone sex dolls have, To a certain extent, crossed the mysterious valley. Indeed, They are used not only as aids for masturbation but also as models by some photographers. With the right photographic techniques, These natural -size dolls are practically indistinguishable by real human models.

If you feel uncomfortable at this moment reading of natural size sex dolls that look like real women, you are not alone. Both feminist and legal scholars have been irritated by this apparently striking use of modern technology. The fear is that sex dolls will teach men to treat real women as nothing but sexual objects whose sole purpose is to provide them with sexual pleasure. Some of these scholars have even asked for a legal ban on realistic sexual dolls.

Given the mysterious valley of natural sex dolls that seem and feel almost real, as well as the considerable social stigma that surrounds them, It is reasonable to ask: What kind of man would still buy a sex doll? This is exactly the question that the psychologist Craig Harper and colleagues from Nottingham Trent University (United Kingdom) they explored in an article recently published in the Journal of Sex Research.